Three Seasons

The orange peel lay on the kitchen counter like a failed suicide — curling strips of rind, the scent of her perfume still clinging to his fingers. Elena had left three hours ago, taking nothing but the clothes on her back and the ceramic bowl she'd made in that pottery class she'd dragged him to last winter.

David found himself at the padel court at 7 AM, the air thick with humidity he hadn't noticed before. His partner, Marcus, was twenty years younger, all elastic energy and optimistic chatter about the startup he was launching. David swung his racquet through empty air, missing the ball entirely. It bounced against the glass wall with a hollow sound that echoed through the cavernous space.

"You're not sleeping," Marcus said. It wasn't a question.

"Elena left."

"Shit, man. I'm sorry."

"She said I'd become like one of those oranges —" David gestured toward the fruit bowl by the bench, "—all surface brightness, nothing inside. No juice. Just a rind getting thicker every year."

Marcus dribbled the ball, considering this. "That's rough."

"She wasn't wrong, though."

Afterward, David drove past the old baseball field where he'd played in college, before the shoulder injury, before the desk job, before the gradual erosion of everything he'd thought he'd become. The stands were empty. A single baseball sat in the dirt near home plate, abandoned, its white leather scuffed brown at the seams.

He parked the car and walked onto the field. The grass was overgrown, the chalk lines faded ghosts of what they'd been. He picked up the baseball — heavy, compact, still smelling of dirt and leather and possibility.

In his kitchen that evening, David peeled another orange. This time he didn't stop at the rind. He tore into the fruit, juice running down his wrists, sticky and bright and impossibly alive. For the first time in years, he tasted something.